Because sports equipment is most often used at locations distant from where it is stored, various sport equipment racks have been designed for attachment to carrying vehicles. Most often, these racks are either mounted to the rear of a vehicle or upon the vehicle's roof. Many types of sport equipment are intended to be loaded and carried on such roof top racks including bicycles, snow skis, and even small water craft such as canoes and kayaks. The smaller pieces of equipment can normally be lifted and loaded by a single person into position above the vehicle for attachment upon the rack system. Larger pieces of sports equipment such as the canoes and kayaks, however, are typically heavier and more cumbersome thereby requiring either more than one person to easily load the equipment piece or requiring a single person to execute several awkward acts to accomplish the loading process.
A prime example and one for which the present invention is intended to facilitate is the loading of an elongate equipment piece such as a kayak. When a person is working alone to accomplish the loading process, it is difficult to lift the entire boat from ground level to above the vehicle's roof into secured engagement upon the roof rack. Therefore, something as long as a kayak will often be loaded one end at a time. This presents difficulties in that the carrying rack is above the vehicle's roof and therefore the boat must be loaded at a substantial angle if the first end is positioned above the vehicle while the remaining and yet to be loaded end is still at ground level beside the vehicle. As a result, great difficulty can be experienced in such an awkward loading process and the first loaded end may slip from the roof rack during the attempt to load the second end.
For this reason, some people faced with such a problem may attempt to provide a make-shift brace that extends beyond the side of the vehicle where the kayak is to be loaded. Because of the inexact nature of such make-shift solutions, disengagement of the same during a loading process may result in harm to the equipment piece, the carrying vehicle, the supporting roof rack, and/or the person attempting the loading process.
In view of these drawbacks described hereinabove regarding possible attempts to answer these needs for mechanical assistance in the loading of elongate sports equipment to roof rack carriers, the present invention has been developed and designed to alleviate the deficiencies and drawbacks and provide beneficial advantages to such a sport equipment loading process.